Who Is Alice Weidel? Lesbian AfD Leader Lives With Her Family in Switzerland as Party Opposing Gay Adoption Wins Saxony-Anhalt

Germany's Alternative for Germany (AfD) has just delivered its strongest state election result in the party's history, led by a woman whose own household appears to defy almost everything the party stands for.

On 6 September 2026, the AfD won 43.8–43.9 per cent of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt, more than doubling its 2021 result and finishing well clear of Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democrats (CDU). The party fell just three seats short of an outright majority, taking 39 of the Landtag's 83 seats against the 42 needed to govern alone.

Co-leader Alice Weidel, openly lesbian and raising two adopted sons with her partner in Switzerland, called the result 'historic'. It has thrust the question of who she is, and how she squares her private life with her party's politics, back into the spotlight.

How the AfD Stormed Saxony-Anhalt

Official results showed the AfD taking 573,360 votes to the CDU's 224,490, a swing of more than 23 percentage points since 2021. Turnout reached 77 per cent, the highest on record for the state.

AfD lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund told supporters, 'We have made history in this state,' while Weidel described the outcome as a clear mandate, though coalition arithmetic still leaves it unclear whether the party can form a government. The result marks the closest a far-right party has come to leading a German state since the Second World War.

Saxony-Anhalt's domestic intelligence service classifies the state AfD branch as 'confirmed right-wing extremist', a designation Siegmund has rejected as politically motivated. Every other major party maintains a so-called firewall, refusing to govern alongside the AfD at state or federal level.

The Ex-Goldman Banker Leading Germany's Far-Right Surge

Weidel, 47, is a former Goldman Sachs analyst and investment banker who holds a doctorate in economics, having spent six years in China studying the country's pension system and learning Mandarin. She joined the AfD in 2013, the year of its founding, drawn initially by opposition to the euro rather than immigration policy.

She rose through the party's federal executive committee before becoming co-lead candidate in 2017, making her the first lesbian to lead a major German party's ticket. Her paternal grandfather, Hans Weidel, was a judge appointed under the Nazi regime, a fact Weidel has said was never discussed in her family home.

She led the AfD to second place in Germany's 2025 federal election alongside co-chair Tino Chrupalla, a result that established her as one of a small group of women, alongside Italy's Giorgia Meloni, now steering Europe's populist right.

Why Alice Weidel's Swiss Home Raises Questions

Weidel has been with her partner, Sarah Bossard, since 2009. Bossard was born in Sri Lanka and adopted as a child by a Swiss couple; she later trained in film in Los Angeles and now runs the Zurich-based production company Kopernikus Films.

The couple are in a civil partnership rather than married, and have not sought to marry despite same-sex marriage being legal in Germany since 2017. Since 2019, Weidel and Bossard have lived with their two adopted sons in the Einsiedeln district of Switzerland, an area that includes the small village of Willerzell.

Weidel maintains an official residence across the border in Überlingen, in her German electoral district, where she is registered to vote and pay tax. She has said the boys are being raised as Christians at Bossard's request, while she herself describes her outlook as agnostic.

The Adoption Ban Weidel Votes for but Doesn't Live By

The contradiction at the centre of Weidel's leadership is long-standing. The AfD's European election platform rejected adoption and reproductive technology for same-sex couples, and the party filed a Bundestag motion in 2018 seeking to repeal same-sex marriage after opposing its legalisation in 2017.

Its manifestos consistently promote a family model built around 'a father, a mother and children'.

Weidel has generally declined to campaign on the issue, telling reporters in 2017 that debating 'marriage for all' was a distraction from immigration policy.

She has argued her sexuality does not conflict with the party's traditional-values platform, framing her own household as a private matter separate from AfD policy.

Critics have argued that her prominence helps soften the party's image on the very rights it opposes for other same-sex couples.

Whatever comes of Saxony-Anhalt's coalition talks, Weidel's rise has ensured her family arrangement will remain as scrutinised as her politics.